Скачать или смотреть ePIC 2022 - HPass: Learnings For Open Recognition From A Truly Global Badging Initiative

Esther Grieder
Humanitarian Leadership Academy, United Kingdom
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ABSTRACT
Introduction
HPass is an initiative which seeks to recognise humanitarian, development and social impact skills and experience worldwide. It now has almost 25,000 users and is used by 30 organisations who issue badges to a single dedicated passport. Its user base is truly global and the top six user countries are the Philippines, Nigeria, UK, Kenya, Yemen and Syria.

HPass has been issuing badges since 2019. It is a unique initiative because it aims to unite an entire sector around one dedicated passport, and in doing so is pioneering open badges in new geographical contexts and for new kinds of work. As a result we have learned much which can contribute to the debates around open recognition and how it may apply in different contexts worldwide.

Key lessons for discussion
The session will present and invite discussion on some key lessons learned by the HPass initiative in relation to badging and open recognition, as follows:

A case for open recognition. At first glance, the humanitarian sector seems to present a clear case for an open recognition approach. A key challenge faced by the humanitarian sector is how to recognise the people that do the most important work – ie the first responders who live in areas most affected by crises, and have local knowledge and networks which are critical to effective emergency response. This group may not have access to formal courses and assessments, may not actually be employed within ‘the sector’, and will likely have no way to have their contributions recognised. There is a natural case here for an ‘open recognition’ approach which enables them to define their own skills and experiences, and what they have learned through engagement in a response. This also chimes in with the sector-wide localisation agenda (instigated by the Grand Bargain agreement at the World Humanitarian Forum in 2016), which aims to empower affected communities by putting humanitarian decision-making and resources into their hands.

An inherent tension. However, despite the seemingly obvious case for open recognition, there is an inherent tension within this approach. Emergency and humanitarian response requires mass mobilisation of staff and volunteers, at speed. Experience and skills need to be rapidly reviewed and verified, which suggests the need for the approach to recognition to be standardised, and would seem to be an obstacle to an open recognition approach. In addition, in many African and Middle Eastern countries, certificates and the credibility afforded by association with a well known institution are incredibly high regarded. This perhaps harks back to the traditional dominance of the sector’s agenda by the Global North, which creates a sense among local actors that they must prove their credentials via association with Global North institutions.

Building community, credibility & trust. In light of the above, it is essential to build a community around HPass, which reflects the whole humanitarian ecosystem, in order to create credibility and trust around firstly the notion of digital badges, and gradually moving to incorporate open recognition models which will be less familiar to the audience. This includes the process of sensitising individual humanitarians, local and international organisations, and employers to open badges and the opportunities they offer for recognising the contributions of the humanitarian sector’s most important actors, and thus supporting the wider localisation agenda. Some of the approaches will include 1) sharing best practice and new use cases across the network, 2) identifying champions among individual users and organisations, 3) raising awareness of sector competency frameworks as a way for individuals to link their achievements to skillsets required by employers, and 4) raising awareness of the HPass brand and offering added value to HPass users in terms of learning opportunities and profile. This needs to be underpinned by a marketing and education campaign to raise awareness of the concept of open badges more generally, which are completely new in most of the contexts in which HPass operates, and which hopefully will gain ground as they also become more widely used in other contexts.

Building the HPass community
The presentation will include a brief section on the activities we are doing to build the HPass community and unite humanitarian actors around one dedicated passport which can be used to showcase a wide range of skills, experiences and learning, and a couple of example use cases.